What a weekend! Friday we spent most of the day documenting the incredible work of one of our Safe Motherhood Ambassadors, 49-year-old, Kindehafti from Aratu, a village about an hours drive from Mekelle on very bumpy roads! Kindehafti is a mother of 3, fistula survivor and leader in her community. She led a meeting of local leaders discussing the importance of facility delivery (where home delivery is the norm) and answered questions about the challenges of access to these facilities and lack of basic services. She then visited a pregnant woman in her community who had delivered her first child at home. Since this delivery was a success, it would be a challenge for Kindehafti to convince her to deliver at a health center but after much discussion they came up with a plan to bring her to the facility close to her due date.

As the sun started to set, we made our way to the marketplace area where we had set up our screen and projector for the premiere screening of "Fistula is Not A Curse". This was the film adaptation UNICEF produced for us in January. Big crowds gathered of all ages. We gave an opening speech and introduced Kindehafti, who shared her testimony in front of the crowd. Then we started the film - and of course, the DVD wouldn't play...thankfully the sound man from our film crew, Yared, saved the day by hooking up his laptop. The crowd was thrilled and attentive throughout. At the end, we held a lottery to give away some of our promotional materials in an orderly way as participants had to fill out a questionnaire about what they learned from the film. The majority of the people in the crowd have very little, they are extremely poor and so a tee-shirt, scarf or umbrella is a huge prize. I was a bit nervous since there was no electricity in town and we used our car headlights so we could see. We also handed out brochures with information about the Mekelle Fistula Hospital. The stars were brilliant and as a final gesture we handed out candles and asked everyone to light them to pledge to work towards ending fistula and helping women deliver safely. It was late by the time we departed, but it was incredible to reach this rural community that knew very little about fistula and how it is caused. We drove Kindihafti home and were about to take the long road back to Mekelle, but we returned to check on our other staff members who were driving in a mini-bus and hadn't caught up. It was good we turned back, their bus has stalled and they would have been stuck...We made our way back to Mekelle very late with the moon rising behind us.